


Lost to Light

by Phasewalker (mehenisms)



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Taken, F/F, Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 14:51:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7578334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mehenisms/pseuds/Phasewalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eris and Ikora's brief Dreadnaught outing goes sour and nearly causes the end of humanity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost to Light

**Author's Note:**

> This verse is my and my best friend's brainchild. It is vast and expansive and emotional and truly horrifying; I hope you all get to enjoy and love it even half as much as we do!

It had not been the first time Eris Morn had set foot on the Dreadnaught. It had been the first time she had not been alone, however.

With her Light gone, and after so much time spent among the Hive, she knew how to slip between sprawling chambers flooded with thrall and spiraling cathedrals to dark gods yet unnamed. Acolytes stared right through her. Thralls did not smell her. She kept away from Knights if only by some sense of self-care Ikora Rey had tried to instill in her since they had made their pact. Her spies survived on self-preservation in the field as though it were their bread and butter.

_Tread lightly, lest they hear, see, smell, or feel you._

Tread lightly, and remain hidden.

They had, for all intents and purposes, done just that. Eris Morn had her ways of sneaking around the Hive, of blending in and even feeling at home. The sickening feeling that had first accompanied that thought now felt like an old friend. She would know something was wrong if she stopped being nauseous any time she pondered just why she could evade the detection of wizards who passed her by, not even two feet away from their dangling coils that threatened to reach out and touch her.

Eris had her ways, but Ikora had others.

The fact of the matter was, there would be no feasible way for Ikora Rey to escape sight among the Hive. She was simply too bright. Too bright, even for Eris – Ikora’s Light burned her eyes. She would be seen by the Hive no matter the method of concealment, so there had been little reason for them to sneak about. No, they had walked down in the middle of pathways, skirted the edge of Knights’ vision with a rifle and twenty-yards’ distance as their only buffer, and had assassinated pack after pack of Acolytes before they could scream a warning to their keepers.

Guardians could not do what Eris Morn could do in the dark, but Ikora was not the only one to be seen on the Dreadnaught that day – Eris had hoped the presence of others would distract from the luminous flame within her friend that burned away darkness with every step she took.

Every Light that moved within those rotting halls attracted attention away from the two of them, thankfully, although there was a moment in which it had seemed strange. Silence was not something that accompanied Guardians, and certainly not in the heart of the Dreadnaught.

 

  **\------------------------------------------**

 

Eris did not shy away from their Light as she wandered into the Hall. She couldn’t.

The warmth of the metal soaked through her gloves. It was as though she cradled a candle, its flame gently wavering. It was comforting, but not enough. She had never held Invective before, but of course it reminded her of Ikora – for better or worse.

They did not hear her at first. The littlest Light among them had been the first to notice her presence, and squinted gently at Eris as the other three discussed a newly-written mission report from a strike team sent to remove a Taken threat at Eris’ own suggestion only days before. They had been successful in their endeavor, it would seem, but she could not breathe a sigh of relief that the monster was gone. Something else may yet take its place. Something worse.

“Eris is back,” the little Titan chimed from her master’s side, small hands placed palm-down on the glass table as she leaned forward in barely-contained excitement. The glow in her eyes dimmed as she peered over Eris’ shoulder and down the corridor, seeming to search for something – _someone_. “Where’s Ikora?”

Zavala’s full attention snapped to Eris upon hearing no response. Cayde shifted his weight, avoiding the eyes of the others gathered around the table. He clasped his hands together in front of him and stared down at his gloves, fiddling with a seam on the thumb of his gauntlet as a distraction. He had tried to tell them it wasn’t normal, what they’d felt while she was gone, but the others had insisted it was just the feeling of battle, of conflict. Now Cayde just felt cold. He knew the others did too, but he also knew they would say nothing.

Four pairs of eyes brimming with Light burned holes through Eris’ tattered armor and left scars on the pale flesh beneath. _Scars_. None of them would leave this room the same as they had entered it.

Rarely did Eris take issue with being the bearer of bad news, as no one else would ever speak of the atrocities she sought solace from because no one else _knew_ of them – no one but one, and he was…difficult to reach. It was no longer too painful to speak of Crota, of Oryx, of ancient Hive rituals and the meanings of them all, of what they would bring into the Light to extinguish it. It was not difficult to utter cryptic ramblings from unholy books and crumbling pages, or scattered pieces of a memory long broken into bits of runes and magick sparsely connected in her mind. But this was different.

This was different because it _mattered_.

She had always been particularly nihilistic since returning from the Hellmouth. Ikora’s shining (yet unstable) sense of optimism had not shaken the sense of foreboding from her, no matter how many years they had spent together or how many times her friend had combated her belief that the City would fall to Oryx. Some part of her wished to believe in the hope that Ikora instilled in everyone around her, and perhaps some part of her did – but that part was gone now, because of what had happened. That same foreboding crept over her like a creature from the shadows, coiling its dark tendrils around her, constricting her, keeping her still in her place at the top of the stairs that led down to the war table, sitting in the center of what seemed to be a shifting pool of pure Light. She was afraid to even put her feet in, for fear of what might happen without Ikora at her side.

Silence filled the room, and for a few long minutes, Eris merely blinked at the beacons before her, stinging her strangled sense of ‘sight’. It was when the Warlock spoke that some semblance of focus returned to her.

Mara Keita had been an excellent choice for an apprentice; Eris had always thought so. She and Ikora were both so alike in history and temperament that for a moment, when she spoke, Eris almost forgot it wasn’t Ikora. Mara knew to take up the gentle (yet firm) tone Ikora used in speaking to her, but it wasn’t quite the same. The English accent betrayed her, and Ikora’s voice was lower.

“Please, tell us what happened.” Eris guessed she had paused to glance at Invective, cradled in her arms. “Is Ikora with you?”

“No.” It was sharper than she had intended it to be. “They took her.”

“Who did?”

 

**\------------------------------------------**

 

It had happened very quickly.

Eris prided herself on her reaction time, but it was nothing compared to Ikora’s, honed by many long decades living alone in the unforgiving wilderness and knowing that anything that moves could end her life. So when the void’s gaping maw burst into existence above them, Ikora was the first to respond.

After the initial shock of it, of course.

The chill in the Dreadnaught could not puncture her layers of cloth and armor on a regular excursion, but with Ikora by her side, Eris usually felt comfortably warm and _safe_. A sense of safety was not something either of them were used to feeling, and particularly not in the field – but alongside each other, they clicked. There was no doubt they would take care of each other and ensure the other would get home safely, no matter the cost.

So this piercing cold was a new feeling. Something powerful, _immovable_ , reached out from the emptiness of another dimension and in the blink of an eye had a massive, blinding claw clasped around Eris. An immense pressure lodged itself between her bones and tried to expand, pressing outward and shattering her very being. It was a feeling of crumbling from the inside out, leaving only a shell behind. And it was freezing.

Her feet had left the ground and the void drew her closer, squeezing the life from her chest and the air from her lungs. She hadn’t screamed. She wanted to believe it had been a choice not to, to simply embrace the fate she’d long feared and longer accepted, but the fact was that she did try, but couldn’t. No sound could get past the crushing claws that seemed anxious to tear her up and put her back together again. All she could hear was the overwhelming, crackling shriek of the void.

And then she was tumbling down through the thin air. She hit the ground with a hollow _thud_ , and drew in a shuddering breath as newborns do. The urge to lay in the dust and flaking chitin and succumb to the reality of the moment was strong, but she had to do something. She did not know what had changed in the blink of an eye, but something did. The spaces between her bones no longer felt infinite, and the chill of the unknown had left her, but she grew colder by the second.

And in a moment, she discovered why.

There was no sound after the portal blinked closed with an ethereal sigh. Eris struggled to her feet, no longer bound by gravity that all but strapped her down to the dirty floor. She raised her eyes and saw nothing. Of course she saw nothing, she was blind – but where there should have been Light, she saw only a deeper darkness.

The slightest glow at her feet gave her something to focus on: A gift in the midst of extreme disorientation. What had happened? The gentle flame was a clue.

She knelt again with some struggle, nearly tumbling onto her side as she wrapped her shaking hands around the weapon. A fire turned over and over upon itself within the confines of sleek Golden Age metal, renewing and intensifying its own heat with each passing moment. The flame felt lost in her hands, as though it flickered in confusion. Where was its master?

Where indeed?

Eris remained there, crouched on the edge of a walkway, reverently holding this shotgun as though it were delicate and had not survived centuries of harrowing use in harsher arenas; as though she could break it if she so much as shifted it in her grasp. She contemplated her adventures with Ikora through the years, the conversations they’d had – one more recent one stood out in her memory, given the situation at hand, though dissociation had set in and she couldn’t remember why at first.

 _“[Is that how we end this — all of us leaping into the dark, to fill it up with light?](http://destiny-grimoire.info/#Card-701180)_ _”_

 

**\------------------------------------------**

 

Ikora had wanted to see the Dreadnaught herself. There was something that had interested her – something mentioned by one of her students, or something she sensed, perhaps – but their purpose there was as lost to Eris now as Ikora was. She gripped Invective tighter and held it a bit closer to her chest, as though protecting a child from something it was not meant to see.

The silence weighed on her so much that it was difficult not to drop to the floor. The heaviness of the afternoon’s events struck her with an open palm, dizzying and disorienting. Her thoughts were jumbled the longer she tried to focus on them, and words caught in her throat with each moment that she considered how to tell the Vanguard that Ikora would not be coming home; that she had failed to protect her leader – that she had failed to protect her _best friend_.

“Who has her, Eris?” Mara’s voice threatened to crack under the pressure that had begun to fill up the room, though she seemed to remain loose and calm. Ikora had taught her well, but there are some things one can never hide. Eris shifted her grasp on Invective to be able to brush a hand against the scorched indent left on her gauntlet where Ikora had caught her and pulled her out of death’s jaws.

Some things just aren’t meant to be hidden.

“Where is she?” Zavala spoke much more sternly than the Warlock standing in Ikora’s place. “What happened, Eris?”

Eris remembered that Ikora had always spoken idly of how he would knit his eyebrows together and frown when he was agitated, and how a quick kiss on his cheek and a gentle caress of his Light would almost always calm him enough to carry on with matters of utmost importance. Eris doubted that Cayde would be able to simulate Ikora’s calming effect.

When she opened her mouth to speak, no sound came forward. She’d lost all semblance of organized thought and instead could only close her eyes and breathe, just as Ikora had told her on many a dark night.

 _Close your eyes. Block out the Light. Now_ breathe.

“Is ‘Kora coming home, Eris?” The young girl standing at Zavala’s side broke the silence, her fear palpable. She had never feared Eris herself, but she was learning about war, what it could do to a person, and what there was to lose.

Zavala shushed her gently as Mara cast a sideways glance their way. Stepping away from the table and towards the bottom of the staircase, she was ready to approach Eris if she did not seem contrary. The other flinched as the Light moved closer, however, so she remained firmly planted where she was despite the chill spreading through her from her feet upwards.

“You’re home now.”

“Yes.” It was shaky, and laced with growing terror in knowing what the moment held, but her voice only cracked. She had managed to speak. Ikora would be proud.

“Who took her, Eris?”

“Oryx.”

**Author's Note:**

> Mara Keita (Warlock) is ThatStupidDeer's oc, and Gyiana Renn (Titan) is mine. Biohazard-13 (Hunter) will be introduced later, and belongs to my partner in crime. All have been integral characters from the start, acting as apprentices to the Vanguard and being groomed to take their place when the time is right. More information on the apprentices and what a Vanguard apprenticeship entails is available upon request and will be elaborated on in future chapters and works!


End file.
